Congratulations to CCW Visiting Research Fellow, Adrian Garside, who will be collecting the Marjan-Marsh award on behalf of the Community Wildlife Ambassadors in South Sudan today at King's College London. The Marjan Centre is part of the War Studies Department at King's College London, and the Marjan-Marsh award is given annually to someone who has made an invaluable contribution to an area where conflict and conservation overlap.

MARJAN MARSH AWARD 2017

As South Sudan grapples with a birth right of conflict, humanitarian crisis and atrocity, on what could the world’s youngest country build a future? Beyond oil, South Sudan has a wealth of natural resources ranging from water, forest and fertile soil, a potential breadbasket for the region if there is peace. Here, the country’s diverse wildlife should play a special role: in these conditions, conservation is first and foremost about people, with National Parks and Game Reserves providing ‘islands’ of stability and security – if there is the will and capacity to do so.

South Sudan’s tropical forest on its western border with DR Congo is a unique habitat for critical wildlife species: here the remote communities that were pillaged by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) are now suffering from South Sudan’s third civil war.

To counter the threat to the Game Reserves deep in the forest, groups of ‘Community Wildlife Ambassadors’ work alongside the government’s wildlife rangers, not only protecting the wildlife but also maintaining a fragile peace in the area.

It is a brave and arduous work, which will be the subject of an illustrated talk (details below) by conservationist and former British military officer, Adrian Garside, along with the presentation of the Marjan Marsh Award for conservation in conflict areas to the Community Wildlife Ambassadors, with Adrian Garside collecting the award on their behalf. Adrian Garside established Fauna & Flora International’s (FFI) Western Equatoria programme in 2011 and developed the Community Wildlife Ambassador model after the outbreak of fighting in 2013.